school hours at a species of "catch-as-catch-can," or playing football
with their heels, or spinning tops, sometimes of European make. Or,
dearest sport of all, racing a donkey while seated on its far hind
quarters, with all the noise and enjoyment we threw into such pastimes
a few years ago. To look at the merry faces of these lively youths,
and to hear their cheery voices, is sufficient to convince anyone of
their inherent capabilities, which might make them easily a match for
English lads if they had their chances.

But what chances have they? At the age of four or five they are
drafted off to school, not to be educated, but to be taught to read
by rote, and to repeat long chapters of the Korán, if not the whole
volume, by heart, hardly understanding what they read. Beyond this
little is taught but the four great rules of arithmetic in the figures
which we have borrowed from them, but worked out in the most primitive
style. In "long" multiplication, for instance, they write every figure
down, and "carry" nothing, so that a much more formidable addition
than need be has to conclude the calculation. But they have a quaint
system of learning their multiplication tables by mnemonics, in which
every number is represented by a letter, and these being made up into
words, are committed to memory in place of the figures.

A Moorish school is a simple affair. No forms, no desks, few books.
A number of boards about the size of foolscap, painted white on both
sides, on which the various lessons--from the alphabet to portions of
the Korán--are plainly written in large black letters; a switch or
two, a pen and ink and a book, complete the furnishings. The dominie,
squatted tailor-fashion on the ground, like his pupils, who may number
from ten to thirty, repeats the lesson in a sonorous sing-song voice,
and is imitated by the little urchins, who accompany their voices by